A Son of Israel – Gilad Shalit

It’s now just after midnight in Israel and Gilad has entered his fourth year in captivity. There are rumors, as there often have been during the last three years, that he might be moved to Egypt soon, that there might be a prisoner exchange, etc. etc. But there are no concrete plan or hopes as of now – at least none that are being confirmed by anyone in the know. Today, thousands – literally thousands of people posted brief messages on twitter praying for Gilad Shalit. The messages were encouraging, demanding, angry and hopeful.

The goal was to reach the top of trend tracking…and we succeeded. It would have been nice to get to # 1, but with a solid # 3, we clearly achieved our goals.

Our goals were to make people aware of Gilad – this we did.

Our goals were to make the media and world leaders aware – I know of at least one Knesset member who commented on our campaign to me privately and all around the world, world leaders and ordinary people gave their support for Gilad.

Our goal was to let Gilad’s family know we have not forgotten him – this was accomplished as well.

No, Gilad is not sleeping in his bed tonight – but we never thought our efforts would bring this to be – that is for others to accomplish and ours to support and hope for.

I want to thank all those who thought of Gilad, all those who twittered or posted on Facebook or elsewhere as part of this campaign – or any campaign. I think we all did a great job and only hope that Gilad will know of our efforts soon – when his parents will have him home and tell him how much we all tried to do what we could.

3 Comments on A Son of Israel – Gilad Shalit

One of my followers (who has thousands following her) in New Jersey, who may have had no idea who Gilad is, retweeting one of my tweets about Gilad. I thanked her because maybe it helped his family in some way. May we have peace, bimhara biyamenu.

We are a democratic country; so much so, we allow our enemies into our government and from the podium of our parliament, they have the freedom to call for policies that would destroy us.
Our current enemies, those who pose the most immediate threat lie to our north. This is Hizbollah land, where according to their leader Hassan Nasrallah, “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”
Our enemies lie to the northeast. This is Syria. My sons have spent many months on the Golan Heights, including some tense days waiting to see how the Syrians would react after Israel sent planes to destroy a building widely believed to be the beginnings of a nuclear reactor. My oldest son fought near Gaza to help stop the rockets from being fired against Israel.
Our enemies lie further to the east. This is Iran, led by fanatics who promise that they will do all they can to accomplish in a few minutes more than what Adolf Hitler accomplished in six years of war. The Iranian leadership has made it clear in words and actions that they are after a nuclear bomb and that their goal is to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Believe them.